


Breakable

by endofadream



Category: Glee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-26
Updated: 2013-10-26
Packaged: 2017-12-30 12:31:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1018642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endofadream/pseuds/endofadream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written as a (late) 5x03 reaction fic from this prompt sent to me on Tumblr: "a reaction fic to 5x3, Finn’s death: Kurt thinks he has to stay strong for everyone else so he doesn’t cry in front of anyone at McKinley…Blaine’s worried…& then one afternoon he finds Kurt on Finn’s bed wrapped in Finn’s jacket and that’s when he breaks down in front of Blaine."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breakable

_I can’t do this._

_I can’t do this._

Kurt can feel that there’s a dam inside him, can feel its slow breaking, the pressure building up, up, up, until it’s too much. Until he can’t handle it anymore. Until he crumples like a puppet with its strings cut, unable to do anything but fall. He’s worried about what will happen when that final wall crumbles. He imagines himself, his body, as a crumbling town in the mighty clutches of a great flood, a tearing, wrecking, destroying force.

He’s been holding it together for so long, from the moment he’d gotten that phone call late, too late, at night in the loft and had known immediately, with a feeling like maggots crawling deep in him, that something was terribly wrong. He’d held it together even when Rachel hadn’t, had held back her hair as she’d thought she was going to be sick from the shock, the anguish, of it all.

They hadn’t had time to prepare, to even entertain the thought, but does anyone, really? Kurt wonders. He hugs his arms to his chest, his dad’s breaking voice still echoing in his head, like if he clutches at his sides long enough he can hold himself together, try desperately—in vain—to keep his insides from spilling out into an undignified heap.

It doesn’t help.

Kurt prides himself on being a rock for other people. He’d been Rachel’s, and he’d been Santana’s, even when Santana had insisted, fiercely and with razor-sharp venom in her words to match the half-inch-long talons on her fingers, that she didn’t need help. Kurt had heard her crying in the space of the few sleepless hours he’d had before he could catch the next flight back to Ohio.

He’s the first one home. He’s the first to see, the first to know everything. He feels numb, filled to the brim with TV static. His bag, stuffed hurriedly and haphazardly with a week’s worth of likely-mismatched clothes, feels heavy but he feels light. The once-comforting glint of his engagement ring in the light when he sweeps his hand over Finn’s dresser makes him feel nauseous. Its glint is empty, plastic where once was promised a diamond. How is it that he had been so happy, so lucky, just a few weeks ago? How is it that Finn had just been congratulating him over the phone, the sound of his voice happy, making Kurt think of how far he’d come since he’d first been there to hold Kurt’s things while he was still being tossed into dumpsters?

How is it that one minute Finn is there and the next he’s…not? He’s vanished, only a shadow remaining, that thing out of the corner of your eye that disappears when you turn your head to try and catch it again. Why is it that Kurt is not crying when he knows he should be?

Why do people like Finn have to go when it’s just _not fair_?

When their friends gather at McKinley, amassed from the corners of the nation, Kurt doesn’t cry. It’s still early, and the funeral is still being arranged, Kurt helping Carole pick out one of Finn’s old suits, the one that Kurt had thought he’d looked so handsome in, so not everyone is here yet, but Mercedes is crying enough for everyone. Puck looks utterly lost, utterly heartbroken, like a puppy abandoned by its master, and Kurt feels that control begin to break as that pressure begins to build up. He wipes his eyes, but they stay dry, even at the end of “Seasons of Love.” He catches Blaine looking at him, curious and with something troubling in the crease of his brow, but Kurt just shakes his head, takes a deep breath and fixes his sleeve.

He’s okay. He’s got this. He does.

Breaking down in front of everyone isn’t an option. He’s seen the way they look at him, pity mixing with their own grief, knows that they’re waiting for his reaction, how he’s feeling. Kurt doesn’t want to give it to them. He doesn’t want to give it to anybody. It’s his.

When everyone is leaving the choir room Blaine stops Kurt before he can, his hand gentle on the crook of Kurt’s elbow. Kurt closes his eyes, sucks in a breath at the familiar grounding feel of his fiancé’s hand on him, and turns. He hates that the first time he’s seen Blaine since their engagement is because of something like this.

Blaine looks at him, nothing but concern in his eyes as they search Kurt’s face. Kurt just blinks, stays silent. “Are you okay?”

Kurt shrugs, grits his teeth and looks at the wall where Lillian Adler’s picture once rested. His eyes sweep over he rows of chairs, and for a moment his mind flashes back, fills those empty seats with memories of all of them there, Finn and Rachel down in front, Kurt and Blaine in the back, their friends on all sides of them as they bickered and argued and tried every single day to outshine each other and prove things that they didn’t need to prove. A lump forms in Kurt’s throat, and his heart pounds in alarm at the hot, brief flash of tears. “I’m as okay as I can be, Blaine.”

His voice wobbles, and judging by Blaine’s head tilt he hadn’t missed it. But he doesn’t say anything, and before he can Kurt says, “I need to go.”

He kisses Blaine, quickly, before he leaves. The entire drive home he grips the steering wheel of his car tightly. “Somebody to Love” comes on the radio and he doesn’t shut it off.

——

Kurt lasts until the funeral, an unseasonably warm day whose presence brings out half-smiles and halfhearted chuckles from attendees. The glee club is somber, and everyone holds hands. Blaine grabs Kurt’s and squeezes, shooting him what Kurt supposes is probably an encouraging smile. He’d send one back if he didn’t feel like an emotional zombie.

He thinks about God during the service, and afterwards in the graveyard, where he doesn’t look at the casket even though he knows that it won’t be lowered until everyone is long gone, until the only sounds in the cemetery are the birds, the wind. He wonders what happens now, and has to stop when something grips his heart in a hot-fleshed, vice-like grip and squeezes until he’s struggling to suck in even breaths. Blaine notices and shifts his hand from Kurt’s to Kurt’s knee, where his thumb rubs circles on the soft fabric until Kurt calms slightly and reaches for Blaine’s hand on his own, grips it tight.

The precipice is dangerously close, and Kurt feels like an old stone statue that has weathered too many rains and gales and storms-of-the-century. Still he refuses to cry in front of everyone, even when Carole is leaning on Burt, and then Kurt himself. He wants to, but he has to be strong. Isn’t that how everyone sees him now? Strong, determined Kurt Hummel who overcame every slushie-drenched obstacle thrown his way and clawed his way to the top.

Abstractly, Kurt thinks back to the week when his dad had had his heart attack and had been in the hospital. He remembers Finn’s Grilled Cheesus, and smiles at the bright blue of the carpet under his feet as the pastor talks in the background. Finn had given up his religion again, but Kurt thinks that somewhere along the way he’d picked it back up. He was smart, Kurt knew, and he hopes that Finn was right.

At home, later, when his father and Carole are downstairs talking, Kurt sneaks into Finn’s old room. Hanging in the doorway for a moment, Kurt closes his eyes and breathes in the still-lingering scent of Old Spice that Finn had always insisted on using despite the perfectly good Calvin Klein cologne Kurt had gotten him last year for Christmas.

For a few moments Kurt lets himself believe that he’s back in high school and that Finn is away, in the kitchen, perhaps, getting their warm glasses of milk before they go to bed. If Kurt listens hard enough he can still hear the faint whispers of Finn’s voice on the air, the ghost of his laugh as Kurt had said something (probably embarrassing, because Finn laughed at those the most) that he’d found amusing

Kurt listens, but all he can hear is silence. The ticking of the clock. Burt and Carole’s voices downstairs. He desperately wants to believe in this moment, wants to think that Finn is here even if he’s not, that he’s watching over Kurt from someplace way up high, a place with pearly clouds and an infinite amount of greasy pizza and football games where Kurt still has no idea who anyone but the kickers are.

Frustration mounts, screams and claws at the underside of Kurt’s skin, but he swallows it down, steps further into the room. It’s like a time capsule, left the way it had been before Finn had left. There is still evidence of life in the room from the dirty clothes on the floor to the messy papers on his desk. Carole must not have cleaned up yet, must have wanted to wait. Kurt doesn’t blame her.

Kurt stops at Finn’s closet, reaches out and hesitates, staring at his long, pale fingers before he opens the door. The old McKinley letterman jacket is front and center, its cream-colored vinyl sleeve poking out over dress shirts of gingham and striped and solid colors. Kurt takes it off the hanger, holds it in his hands and hefts its weight. He swallows hard, feeling that lump in his throat growing bigger and bigger, inflating like a balloon, and collapses onto Finn’s bed.

Silent he situates himself, crawling towards the middle and drawing his legs up towards his chest. Memories of nights spent in here, watching with idle annoyance and disinterest as Finn had played video game after violent videogame, occasionally responding in his quirky, humorous way at Kurt’s barbed insults at the useless nature of the games.

He drapes the jacket over himself, lets it warm him as he closes his eyes, tries to bury himself deep under memories. Maybe he can pretend, just for one more night, before they have to begin cleaning up and packing stuff to give up or keep.

Kurt lets out a breath, and its shuddery, his body shivering and knocking its joints together with it. He grips the edges of the jacket, holds tight and draws it closer around him. In here, everything is still okay. In here, nothing has happened.

Because of this Kurt doesn’t hear the faint, timid knock at the door, doesn’t heart the soft footsteps across the room before the bed sinks down next to him. Kurt is teetering on a tightrope hundreds of stories about the ground and he’s beginning to lose his footing. He can feel the swoop of the fall in his stomach, can feel it in his bones and the way his heart pounds faster and faster. Heat burns at his eyes.

“Kurt?”

And Kurt falls.

He turns, all pretense given up as he presses his body tight to Blaine’s, lets his hands grip and clutch at Blaine’s shoulders, his biceps, his waist. The sobs are loud, heartbreaking, and come from within some unexplored, undiscovered cave deep in his chest. Blaine tugs Kurt up like he weighs nothing, rubs a soothing hand down the jacket still covering Kurt’s back. He’s whispering words into Kurt’s ear, words that Kurt can’t understand through his broken-hearted _everything_.

“He’s gone,” he sobs. He’s never broken down in front of Blaine like this before, has never cried like this in front of _anyone_ before, but there is no room in him to be embarrassed right now. His tears soak Blaine’s cardigan and every time he tries to sniffle back the moisture in his nose he chokes on it until Blaine has to gentle pat his back in between rubbing. “He’s gone, Blaine.”

Blaine just shushes him, rocking them back and forth gently. He presses his lips to the tip of Kurt’s head, strokes a hand through Kurt’s hair. Kurt closes his eyes, buries his face in the crook of Blaine’s neck as he shudders, shakes.

“I know, baby,” Blaine whispers. “I know. It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay.” His voice is tight, and Kurt can hear the tears there, knows that Blaine is probably crying, too and he wonders how Blaine is taking this, since Finn’s been around Blaine more in the past year than Kurt has. But Blaine doesn’t say anything else, just continues rubbing Kurt’s back in long, soothing sweeps. He doesn’t need to. Kurt knows.

He clutches tighter to Blaine’s back, to the anchor to his rock, and tries not to drown.


End file.
